At Some Point You Gotta Suck It Up

At some point you have to admit you know nothing about what it is you think you know. For me it is training a dog. Once upon a time I had two wonderful dogs. Davey and Molly. They barked at strangers walking by our windows, loved to go for rides in the car, slept in our bed, ate our food, and pulled on their leashes when they walked. They were perfect. When they got old, gray, and one by one passed away we were very sad. We dreamed of having pups just like them again someday.

In came Walter the Wonder dog. Six months later out went Walter the Wonder dog. A rescue dog afraid of men who peed everywhere all the time and was so unhappy. With this rocky relationship we opted to find a better home (which worked out great) and vowed to know the dog we were getting next time around.

In comes Maggie. A Golden Retriever we adopted at six weeks old and 6 pounds. She is now roughly 1 1/2 and 95 pounds. We love her. She jumps, barks, eats our food, pulls everything out of the trash, and pulls on her leash. She is perfect, but at 95 pounds she is fast, defiant, loud, and almost uncontrollable in certain situations. All the home training efforts haven't worked. Some of our best friends and us are hopefully getting together this summer, there is a good chance they will come here, and they have the cutest little baby ever. Even though Maggie love, love, loves kids we cannot have any overly excited puppy accidents, then or ever. Lately Maggie has been barking at the geese and fox in the back yard (on the golf course) at night. She won't stop, won't come back inside, and is practically hysterical. We can't catch her, we can't coax her, we can't be leader of the pack when we are bordering crazy over the situation. So... we've called in the professionals. They'll be here next weekend and every weekend after that until she is certifiable trained exactly the way we want. I hope our pup, Maggie, enjoys our tax return :P)